Comparison

Topics covered:  We seem to be at peace whenever we are getting what we want, but anything can interrupt that kind of peace; There is never a moment when you are not being given what you need, but you have to want to receive what you are being given; If you are thinking about how to face a moment outside of what is practical, you are lost.

All forms of useless suffering are created in a vain attempt to either acquire what we imagine will make us feel complete, or in the equally vain attempt to escape or otherwise control what we perceive is making us feel incomplete, or somehow inadequate.

Classroom Talk: 10/2/2024 - Continuing to look for something new outside of yourself is like rearranging the clothes in your closet and, after you're done, going back through it hoping to find the experience of some unexpected joy.

Classroom Talk: 2/14/2024 - Part 1: The witness to experience is not bound by it. Part 2: It's impossible to enjoy any moment in life, while fearfully trying to control it at the same time... that is, unless your idea of pleasure is the pain of making impossible demands on "others," not to mention upon yourself.

Classroom Talk: 1/25/2023 - Nothing makes us more common and unkind -- more like everyone else we judge -- than identifying with familiar painful negative reactions that seem to prove we're somehow different, superior to those whose character we hold in contempt.

Topics Covered: Be present to the parts of you trying to pull you down; Don't stop and pick the flowers... smell the flowers, but keep going; The depth of the illusion is nothing to the light that reveals it; There is no such thing as compulsive pleasure; The very action of thought separates us from what it wants to acquire; Without thought everything is clear; Thought is the disturbance and not...

Topics Covered: If you are against something you cannot change; The opposites are secretly complimentary; You can't win freedom, you can only be free; You can't judge without resistance; Avoidance is the continuation of the consciousness that resists; We are not our thoughts and feelings; No one is free who worships an image or an icon; All understanding is in scale...

Classroom Talk: 05/10/2026 -

Is not the whole world being reborn every moment?
Why not just step up, and go in…
There’s no waiting list.

Classroom Talk: 02/15/2026 - It is impossible to imagine a better time to come without making more real a sense of self that is forever trying to escape the time within which it is trapped.

Classroom Talk: 11/09/2025 -There are thousand different ways to wrap a gift, but there’s only one way to receive the true “present” moment…and that is to be open to what it has come to give you.